Nothing can make you appreciate home more than a family vacation. Maybe your whole life you've fantasized about bringing a child — your child — to that favorite theme park you loved so much yourself. Only your dream vacation didn't include the real-life nightmare of a toddler running, shrieking, from a larger-than-life plush armadillo, or wetting her pants on the Spinning Suspenders ride, or throwing herself to the ground in an epic cotton-candy/missed-nap tantrum.

"The biggest mistake parents make is trying to do too much on vacation," says Laura Sutherland, a mother of two and author of five books on family travel, including Tropical Family Vacations. "Parents get so excited — they've been waiting to take these special trips with their kids — that they end up being too ambitious or going when the kids are too young." And, as every parent knows, that's the kind of vacation you need a vacation to recover from.

My own children are 5 and 2 now, and I'm finally learning to plan better vacations myself — ones that make the most of my kids' interests, attention spans, and energy levels (think: beach). But at every age, it helps to talk to other parents: Find out what worked, what didn't, and whether those 15 hours of "Are we there yet?" were worth it in the end. That's what we offer you here: the 20/20 hindsight of other people's vacation disasters, from the pregnancy hell-trip to the preschooler airplane apocalypse. We've already taken the very worst trips — so you won't have to.

Trips pregnant travelers should skip

Traveling while pregnant is like a sneak preview of traveling with a toddler: You'll need to stick to your nap schedule, pack lots of extra snacks, and know where the potty is at all times. And then there's your inevitable whining, crankiness, and — when it comes to those yogurt pretzels — your renewed inability to share. In addition to basic issues of comfort, there are serious issues of safety for expectant travelers.

"Consider traveling during your second semester, when you're over the hump of the first, but not yet huge or close to your due date," cautions Sutherland. "And use common sense. You might be thinking, 'Oh, it's my last hurrah without kids!' But it's best to play it safe: Keep your doctor's number with you, figure out where the local hospital is, skip locations that pose a danger from illness or unsafe water, and plan a less — rather than more — ambitious trip."

Good advice. But remember, too, that your pregnant self might recoil in horror and exhaustion from things that regular people might find perfectly relaxing. This can be especially true in the first trimester. When I was eight weeks pregnant with our second child, for example, we traveled to a beachside wedding in Southern California, and the very sight of the ocean — all those rolling, fish-filled waves — made me gag. I had to stand with my back to the sea, mentally holding my nose against its revolting brininess, and not eating the sushi that came by on platter after platter (no raw fish, not that I was exactly craving it) or the goat cheese canapÈs (who knew whether it was pasteurized?) or the Caesar salad (raw egg alert!). (I also happened to look like an elephant's leg in a dress that had fit me in a perfectly lovely way before we left, though this alone would have been no reason to skip a trip, of course.)

After the wedding, we made the huge mistake of driving to San Francisco — past miles of reeking cattle ranches that left me sobbing in the passenger seat — where we stayed with friends whose apartment sat atop an Asian noodle shop. Our choices were to keep the window closed (and induce sweltering) or open it (so the garlicky-bean paste odor could drift in and set me to retching). If I had it to do over, I wouldn't.

Most final-trimester travelers have no shortage of woes to recount, even if they're not of the high-drama I-delivered-my-baby-in-the-Paris-MÈtro genre. "I went to my sister-in-law's college graduation when I was eight months along," reminisces Emily Bloch about her first pregnancy. "It was my last 'big trip' before settling in for nesting and orneriness. Little did I know when I casually made the plane reservations when I was six months along that by eight months, I had already crossed the line into orneriness." Curious bystanders ("Wow, you're huge!"), erratic climate control, and relatives brimming over with labor and delivery horror stories — to say nothing of those ballooning airplane ankles — all conspired to make her wish she'd never left home.

Ditto Becky Michaels, a mother of two, who asks, "Did you ever notice how helpful strangers are when you're pregnant — 'Oh, let me get the door for you!' — versus how unhelpful they are when you're pregnant and have a child? I'll never forget staggering to the way back of an airplane holding a toddler's hand, a diaper bag, and a huge car seat that didn't fit frontways in the aisle, so I had to turn it to the side, trying not to whack anybody. All this while my fellow passengers and the flight attendant watched!" Sutherland's advice about traveling with a toddler when you're expecting is simple: "Don't. It will just be exhausting." If you're really craving a break, consider getting away for a weekend with your family — just not very far away. That hotel two towns over might offer all the remoteness you need right now.

Even if you don't have a toddler in tow, if you're expecting, expect a different vacation from what you're used to. Plan carefully — splurge on nicer accommodations or a bigger rental car, run the trip by formerly pregnant friends, simplify your itinerary — and plan to bring your sense of humor.

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